Re: WANTED: Information on Apple II copy protection

[smentzer@ecom.net (Steven W. Mentzer)]

>
>   Bug emulator authors to "emulate" *standard* Apple II file formats,
>and not be off on their own idiot little world doing whatever sounds
>nice to them at the time. Standards exist for a reason, and idiot file
>formats of the hour are not the way to help everyone. 

Nathan, actually emulator authors prefer to use a proprietary disk IMAGE 
format for use within the emulators. I remember when you went ape shit about 
the 2MG format, when in all reality, it is a nicer way to deal with disk 
images ranging in size between 140k and 32MB. 

There was NO sense in supporting a "SDK" or "SHK" format by the emulator, 
since these are not really viable disk image formats (in fact, you know as 
well as I do that SHK is really a file archive (tar/gzip), so that isn't 
applicable to emulators anyway.

DSK and PO formats are OK, but the 2MG format kind of "wraps" them up, and 
makes emulators like XGS easier to work with. Besides, utilities exist to 
convert .PO and .DSK images to 2MG anyhow, so what is the big deal?


>
>   But, as the emulator users seem to care more about pirating than
>being able to use legit software, it's not surprising that they make
>folks jump thru lots of hoops to use legit software in .SHK or .BXY
>format, while pirated stuff is trivial. Sad, really.
>


Ummm... wrong. Some of us prefer to develop apple IIgs software on the 
emulator because it's much...much faster..

smentzer@ecom.net